Website Testing Wins: Read Our Lips … No Sales Taxes

What do political elections and this Website Testing Win have in common? Taxes! The big difference, however, is that this retailer—unlike some candidates for office—actually follows through on its promise not to charge taxes.

People factor sales tax into their final price considerations, so pointing out when they don’t have to pay this duty on purchases can help convince them to buy. An omnichannel retailer of apparel, footwear, and accessories wanted to see if letting visitors know upfront about this savings would improve sales.

Rather than wait until checkout to determine whether a consumer’s purchase qualifies for tax-free status, the retailer used geotargeting to establish their general location. If the visitor was located in a state where the retailer does not collect sales tax, the retailer served up a banner ad on the homepage (or landing page) that promoted this benefit. And dynamic rendering of text in the banner (shown below, with “Your State” filling the spot where individual state names would render) allowed the retailer to easily change up the name of the state based on visitor location without the need to develop numerous creatives.

You don’t have to be a pollster to guess how this A/B test performed. Compared to the control group, the test segment produced a 6.48% jump in revenue per session. The retailer estimated that the annual revenue increase for this campaign reached into the six figures. Even better, it didn’t have to spend any of these new sales dollars on dozens of banner ads to deploy this campaign.

Peter Borden is a marketing strategist here at Monetate and is responsible for PPC and email marketing strategy. He is the author of the popular Website Testing Wins series. Peter's also an expert on the psychology of persuasion, influence, and conversion as well as an active iOS developer.